


Rage, Rage, Ye Daughters of Creation

by MinervaFan



Series: Recreating the World in Her Image [3]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Feminist Themes, Gen, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 09:38:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19827442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MinervaFan/pseuds/MinervaFan
Summary: In order to understand where we are, we must know where we've come from. Lilith lays some historical truth bombs on the Spellman Sisters and Mary Wardwell.





	Rage, Rage, Ye Daughters of Creation

**Author's Note:**

> This work is by no means intended to criticize anyone's faith. I'm almost 100% sure that Season 3 will render this entire story AU, so there we are. It's just something I needed to write. BIG thanks for Ellisbelle (Julie) and Katmigordon for the beta read.

**Mary**

If she hadn't known better, she would have sworn it was one of Grandmother Wardwell's tea parties. Polite small talk. Casserole tucked amidst the meager contents of her refrigerator. Tea brewing in the kitchen as they sat in the parlor. 

It was the textbook definition of awkward.

Hilda Spellman sat next to her on the settee, smiling too widely and tugging nervously at the collar of her cardigan. Her older sister sat properly on the chair opposite them. Formal, her auburn hair coiffed in a soft French twist, Zelda Spellman would have been intimidating at any other time. But today, Mary simply didn't have it in her.

Today, these women were in her home, on her turf, and the subject of conversation was her life. Mary looked from one woman to the other as they shared surreptitious glances between them. Her experience with the mysterious Spellman sisters had been limited in the past to the occasional school-related activities concerning Sabrina. Their interactions had been brief, polite, but nothing to justify the eerie familiarity she was sensing from them now. 

They _knew_ her, or at least the her who had taken over Mary’s life for so many months. They knew what had happened to her, at least in part, yet here they sat like Victorian matrons in the parlor, wasting time being polite.

"So," she said into the heavy silence. "Can either of you explain the blood between the tiles on my bathroom floor?"

Zelda stiffened visibly, and Hilda laughed too loudly. "Right, then," the blonde woman chirped nervously. "Just jumping into it, are we?"

"No, Hilda, it's good." Zelda's composure reasserted itself immediately. "The woman has questions. Let's not insult her intelligence with games." 

"No, of course not," Hilda continued with a quick smile. _Sotto voce,_ she added to her sister, "Did you know anything about blood? This is the first I'm hearing about blood..."

"Calm yourself, Sister. I will handle this." 

Mary watched the sisters dance a well-rehearsed routine of submission and authority and wondered how often they had done this sort of thing. "We can come back to the blood later if you'd like." She was amazed at how calm she sounded, all things considered. "Perhaps we can start with something a little easier, like who the hell has been living my life for the last eight months?"

Zelda cleared her throat. "A fair question," she said in her smoky contralto. "One that I'm afraid does not have an easy answer."

"Feel free to try." She didn’t attempt to soften her tone. After all, she was the injured party here, wasn't she?

Hilda leaned towards her, wrapping Mary's hands in her own and squeezing gently. "I know this is hard, love," she cooed in that soft, lilting accent of hers. “You must be very confused.”

Mary lifted an eyebrow at the blonde. “I woke up to find my possessions in a cardboard box, my students almost a year older, and that I’m now principal at a school where everyone fears me.” She laughed without humor. “Yes, I think we can safely assume some confusion here.”

"Perhaps you can start by telling us what you remember...from before. And we can try to fill in the gaps as best we can." Hilda glanced to her sister, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

Mary looked from one sister to the other. Hilda, soft and bright and tender. Zelda, all sharp edges and authority. Both held their own kind of power, and each radiated her own flavor of concern as they waited for her to speak.

"We truly mean you no harm, Mary," Zelda prompted, and Hilda nodded fervently in agreement.

Mary took in a long breath, forcing her thoughts back to the last moments she could remember from the night before everything went haywire. "I saw a film at the Paramount. _Night of the Living Dead._ " She paused a moment, then continued. "Sabrina was there with her friends. She invited me to join them at Doctor Cerberus's for coffee and a post-mortem, which was sweet if somewhat inappropriate. I declined and headed home." She breathed deeply, focusing on the memories.

"Take your time, love," Hilda said.

Mary nodded. "I remember a girl, a young woman in the road as I was driving home. She looked… I don't know what I was thinking. I should have just called 911. I have more sense than to pick up a hitch-hiker, even one so obviously in need of help."

"That may not have been entirely your fault," Zelda interjected with a knowing glance at her sister. 

"Instead of driving her back to town as I should have, I brought the girl home. Gave her something to eat." Even in her own ears, it sounded crazy to Mary. "Who does that, in this day and age? We talked for a bit, and then she asked..." A feeling of dread stirred in her stomach, but she forced herself to continue. "She asked...she asked if I knew Sabrina...she..." The dread turned to panic, and she found herself unable to breathe. "She...I..."

Hilda was warm and soft as she pulled Mary into a fierce embrace. "You _died_ , love. That's when you died." The kettle whistled in the other room, but Hilda did not release her. "Zelds, will you see to that? I'll take it from here."

**Hilda**

She felt for the poor love, she really did. Truly, how hard is it to lose months of one’s life, right? Hilda held Mary against her, a pillowy haven for the slight creature. She shivered like a bird in her embrace as the tears came freely. 

“I’ve cried those same tears, love,” she whispered into Mary’s hair. The woman was surprisingly warm to the touch and smelled of sweet humanity and household cleaner. “The first time is the hardest…” She caught herself too late, shrugging off the terrified expression Mary turned up at her. “No, no! Of course, there’s not going to be a ‘next time.’ I mean, not for you. Not like this. I mean, not like me….”

“What do you mean, ‘not like me?’” Mary asked, her voice hoarse and low.

Hilda drew in a deep breath and set Mary next to her on the couch as one would a small child needing a lecture. “Now, surely you’ve figured out that this is not just any normal situation, right?” She grinned nervously. “I mean, you _know_ something strange has happened, something _not_ ordinary?”

Mary just nodded, giving Hilda nothing much to work with.

“Right, then,” Hilda said, scouring her mind for the right words, the perfect metaphor to explain the unexplainable. “Sabrina says you’ve been working on a book, right? About the Greendale Thirteen?” 

“I’m not sure what that…”

Hilda leaned in close, a conspiratorial smile on her face. “You know? About the witches, right?”

“I don’t understand.”

Hilda sighed, her palms turned upward as she shrugged. “Now come on, Mary.” She placed a rounded fingertip under Mary’s chin, lifting her face until their eyes locked. “You know better. Stop listening to your fear, and listen to that voice inside of you. The one who always _knows…_ ” Her lips tugged slightly upward, a gentle sigh escaping her lips. “Tell me what you _know_. Tell me what you know in your heart, and can no longer deny….”

The moment hung between them for what seemed an eternity, then Mary whispered, “You’re witches.” Hilda just nodded, letting her process out loud. “You...and your sister. Sabrina!”

“Well, technically, Sabrina’s only _half_ -witch. Her mother was a mortal, like you.”

“You killed me?” Mary’s words were equal parts terror and disbelief. “And brought me back to life?”

“Don’t be absurd.” Zelda’s voice was deep and strong as she brought the tea service in from the kitchen. “Under the right circumstances, it can happen, of course. But we would not have reanimated one who was gone as long as you were. And, no, we _certainly_ did not kill you.” She set the tray down on the table in front of Hilda and Mary, then filled a cup for Mary. “Drink.” It was not a suggestion.

Mary sipped the hot tea slowly, calming visibly as she did.

Hilda mouthed the words, “Calming potion?” and Zelda nodded.

"A few moments ago," Mary began, looking at Zelda, "you said it might not have been my fault that I picked up that girl in the road." She narrowed her gaze, eyeing the auburn-haired witch shrewdly. "What did you mean by that? Was I...targeted in some way? And you still haven't told me by whom."

"The _whom_ part might take a bit of working up to, poppet," Hilda murmured.

"Suffice it to say, the entity who.. _borrowed_ your form was working under certain restrictions..."

"In the end, it was really quite fortunate she’d chosen you..." Hilda interjected.

"Your sacrifice, in part, helped put in motion what might have been a catastrophic chain of events, which..."

"Well, _we_ _think_ , anyway," Hilda said. "It was something about you that helped turn the tide." 

“Something in your personality that softened the entity and…”

“Averted the apocalypse, don’t you know?” Hilda shuddered. "We were lucky. Honestly, can you imagine if Lilith had chosen George Hawthorn instead of Mary?" The words were out of her mouth only seconds too soon. 

"Hilda!" Zelda's hiss cut like a laser beam to the forehead.

"Lilith?" The expression on Mary's face was combined disbelief and horror. " _The_ Lilith?" The horror morphed into shock, then angry incredulity. "Lilith? From Judeo-Christian mythology?"

"Trust me, she's no myth..." Hilda muttered under her breath.

"My life... _my_ life..." Mary's cheeks flushed pink, blue eyes flashing. "...was commandeered by a.. _sex_ _demon_?"

"Oh, dear..." Hilda breathed.

"You _will_ keep a respectful tone..." Zelda began, then stopped short. Hilda could actually see her calming her rage through sheer force of will as Mary shrunk before the might of it. After a deep breath and in a much softer tone, the elder Spellman sister continued. "Ms. Wardwell, I understand how difficult it is to feel you've lost control of your life. Trust me, I understand the fear and the rage. The...helplessness..."

Hilda leaned forward to offer a hand to her sister and squeeze. It was unlike Zelda to reveal so much, especially in front of a mortal. 

Zelda lifted herself to her full height, squeezing her sister's hand gently before releasing. "Mary, as I said before, you have been drawn into a drama much larger than yourself. Larger than all of us, this entire town. No one expects you to grasp the enormity of what has happened completely."

“We can barely grasp it, and we were right in the middle of it…” Hilda added.

Mary looked from one sister to another helplessly. 

Poor love, Hilda thought. It was as if all the fire had burned out of Mary Wardwell, leaving only smoldering embers in its place. So much to wrap the brain around, so much insanity… “Have another sip of tea, sweetie,” Hilda murmured.

Zelda gave her a small smile and a gentle nod. “Perhaps I can take it from here, sister.”

**Zelda**

Zelda waited for Mary to take another draught of tea, waited patiently for the calming elixir to do its work. 

“Mary,” she said gently. “I know this has been difficult. I know you’re frightened. But I’m going to ask you to be brave now. There are things you must know, and some of them might not be easy to hear. You have questions. Now is the time to ask them.”

Mary’s eyes were wide, blinking slowly as if struggling to comprehend the words Zelda had said. It was easy now to distinguish between this Mary Wardwell and the one she’d come to know as Lilith. Gone was the depth of power in those blue eyes, replaced by confusion and helplessness. Zelda understood now the compassion Sabrina felt for this woman. She didn’t deserve…

No. That was not a path she wished to follow. She nodded to Mary again. “Now would be the time…” she repeated.

“Why? Why me?”

The words were so soft Zelda almost thought she’d imagined them. After all, it was the question she’d dreaded the most, the one she had prepared for. So why was she having trouble forming the words for an answer?

“Well…” Hilda started to speak, but Zelda stopped her with a simple gesture of her hand. The last thing she needed was Hilda going off on a tangent.

“Mother Lilith needed a compatible host. One who had access to Sabrina, yes, but also…” Zelda paused to phrase her words properly. “She needed a host who was capable of... _channeling_ is not the right word...”

“Channeling sounds exactly right to me, sister….”

“ _Supporting_ magic,” Zelda corrected. “Someone whose physiology was compatible with magic, much like computer hardware must be compatible with the software loaded onto it.”

“She needed someone with magical blood in their veins,” Hilda added, in case there was still any doubt in Mary’s mind what they were getting at.

The expression on Mary’s face was difficult to read. “Are you implying that... _that I’m a witch_?”

Hilda laughed before Zelda could stop her. “Oh, dear me, no! Of course not.”

Zelda’s glare quieted her before she could continue. Hilda held her words and looked duly chastised as Zelda continued the explanation. “You are, unfortunately, not a witch. To be honest, we could use more witches on our side at this time. What you _are_ …” She paused. “What you are is the descendant of a warlock.”

“Samuel Wardwell…” Mary and Hilda said simultaneously.

“Yes, Samuel Wardwell, your ancestor, was a warlock.” Zelda confirmed.

“Most of the poor souls killed in Salem were unfortunate mortals,” Hilda explained. “But some members of the actual Salem coven were caught up in the mess.” She shook her head. “It was an awful time for everyone, witches _and_ mortals alike.”

“Our own coven in Greendale suffered great losses, as you well know.” 

Mary’s jaw set stubbornly. “I’ve done extensive research on Samuel Wardwell. He was a baptized Quaker, a carpenter. Granted, he was a very foolish man who dabbled in palmistry and fortune-telling, but he was no witch.”

“I’ll agree on the foolish part,” Zelda said not unkindly. “But he was no more a Quaker than I am.”

“Sometimes coven members in smaller communities like Andover were forced to attend Christian services as a form of camouflage. At the time, most of the real witches in Salem Village were practically indistinguishable from the most faithful Christians,” Hilda added. “Well, except for the magic and worshipping the Dark Lord…”

“Again, times were...difficult. Witch hunters grew fat and happy on the misfortunes they wrought. For a time, no one was safe...not even actual witches.” Zelda took a deep breath before continuing. “Honestly, Mary, much of what I’m about to tell you I’ve only learned myself.” There was a bitter tint to her voice she could not disguise. “It has to do with your ancestors, and many others just like them.”

Mary took another sip of tea, but said nothing.

Zelda continued. “When I prayed to Mother Lilith for guidance on how to help you through this transition, I was guided to a restricted book in our coven’s library.” She steadied herself. While it was crucial to present a calm face to the mortal, Zelda found the act of saying these truths aloud extremely discomfiting. “The book was a diary of a former member of the Salem Coven, a woman by the name of Sister Amelia Cornwell. Sister Cornwell was a member of a secret group known as the Vitiators, or corruptors. They were a sort of magical hit squad, and their job was to nullify threats to the safety of the witching community.”

She paused to let this sink in, then continued. “Any witch caught in the dragnet of the witch hunts was deemed... _expendable_.” She felt the bile on her tongue at the word. “The Greendale Thirteen…”

“It is a shameful part of our coven’s history,” Hilda interceded when Zelda momentarily found herself at a loss for words. “Those poor souls were sacrificed, ‘for the good of the coven,’ while the rest of the coven hid.”

“Every coven member knows this story,” Zelda said. “It’s part of our history, while shameful, we feel each child of Night must learn and remember, lest it happen again.”

“But none of us were ever taught about the Vitiators. They were a nasty lot.”

Zelda cleared her throat. “The Vitiators...sought out those witches and warlocks who were caught up in the witch hunts. Regardless of whether they confessed or not, these individuals were considered too great a threat to be allowed to….” She closed her eyes, then started again. “The Vitiators used what was called an _eradicā́mus_ spell on the survivors.”

“According to Amelia’s diary, the spell was used on your ancestor’s surviving family. His wife and surviving children.”

“I know enough Latin to guess what the spell did,” Mary said.

Zelda nodded. “The spell, an incantation no one outside of the Vitiators and the High Council in Rome even knew existed, was used for the specific purpose of stripping witches..and all their descendants...of their magic. Permanently.”

Whether Mary understood the ramifications of what was being said, Zelda didn’t know. Her stomach clenched at the thought of generations of witches paying for the foolishness of their ancestors in such a way.

“It wasn’t just the witches caught in witch trials, though,” Hilda added darkly.

Zelda sighed. Perhaps it was too soon to bring up this part of the scandal. She barely wished to know it herself, much less share it with a virtual stranger. But if Mary was going to help her do what needed to be done, she deserved to understand fully what all of this meant. “Hilda is right,” she sighed. “You see, in discovering what happened to your family, Mary, I learned something very disturbing about the history of our coven--of our entire religion. Something that undermines everything I was ever taught, everything I ever believed.”

But she couldn’t bring the words. She couldn’t force them from her throat, where they stuck like daggers as she tried to choke them out.

“Perhaps this is where I should take over.”

The three women whirled to see Lilith herself, dressed simply in a blue gown, standing in Mary’s parlor. She still wore the face of the mortal woman, who bolted up to her feet in alarm.

“Don’t worry, sweet Mary. I’m not here to harm you, I promise.” She reached forward, brushing a stray bang from the familiar face. “I promise, I will never harm you again, daughter.”

She waved a single, graceful hand toward Mary, and before Zelda knew what was happening, both women vanished.

**Lilith**

When all is said and done, there really isn't much difference between absolute darkness and absolute light. Both are beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, equally terrifying and confusing. It was a moment before Lilith became aware of Mary's rising panic. She blurred perfection slightly, waving texture into the space around them, slight impurities of shadow to ease the stress of sameness.

_Are you with me, Mary?_

Mary seemed tiny in this place, even smaller than Lilith remembered her in physical form. In this place where time and space ceased to have meaning, the tiny spark of sentience known as Mary Wardwell was a mere glimmer, barely visible to her comprehension.

_Don't try to speak, child. I will hear your thoughts, if you keep them steady. Calm yourself. You're safe here. They haven't been in this space for millennia._

_Who hasn't been here?_

Good. The mortal was at least thinking clearly enough to be curious. 

_God. Jehovah, the heavenly hosts of angels. Pick a name. Humans have been trying to apply labels to this particular intangible since we were picking fleas out of each others' fur._

_Is this...heaven?_

_Don't insult either of our intelligences, Mary. Heaven is a human concept. The beings which once inhabited this realm were neither good nor evil. Our pitiful concept of morality means nothing to them, much less some archaic notion of paradise._

Bitterness was intoxicating, and it permeated the surroundings. Blinding white faded to gray around them, and Lilith began to grasp some awareness of space. It was never enough here, but it was enough to pull Mary closer, guide her. These children were so tiny, so fragile. Had she ever been as tangible, as fraught with mortality as this distant descendant of her line? 

_Where are we, then?_

Persistent. Good. Curiosity fed like ravenous locusts in this realm, and Mary was nothing if not curious.

_The realm of the Creator god. Abandoned, as all failed experiments are eventually. I come here to think, sometimes. It's quiet. Not a lot of that in this universe._

_Are you...a god?_

_Now, don't be silly. We both know that gods don't exist, at least not the way humans think. No, the Creator god, for lack of a better term, was as different from us as you are from an amoeba, but it was no deity. It held no extraordinary power of piety. It was not omniscient, nor was there any cosmic plan. Took me long enough to figure it out, but our 'Father' was just a hyper curious being with more power than sense._

Lilith could feel the mortal consciousness processing, analyzing, parsing each sentence to its simplest unit for digestion. Questions rose and fell like the sea in a storm, swells dying without peaking, thoughts tumbling one over the other without a single thread gaining traction.

_Why am I here? What do you want to show me?_

Had she eyes to close, Lilith would have done so. Had she lungs to breathe, she would have done so. Instead, she steadied her thoughts. She could do this better than any being on Earth, possibly better than the Dark Lord himself, although he had originated here prior to his fall.

But Lilith had spent lifetimes learning to survive, learning to hide, learning the proper time for silence as well as the proper time for an attack. This place, as much as she hated to admit it, was part of her. It called to a part of her no god or devil had ever been able to crush or tame.

_You need to know who you are. Who all of you are, and why. Words...words do not suffice._

She willed it, and it was so. _The Creator god was curious, and that was the beginning of all things._

As she spoke, the emptiness exploded around them, from nothingness to incomprehensible enormity in a fraction of a second. Heat, energy, expanding at rates no living creature could grasp, but in this space seemed plausible. A nascent universe from emptiness in a blaze of creative recklessness.

_The Creator god was curious, and time began. And time fascinated the Creator no end. Time begat matter, and it found matter equally enthralling. The Creator and its kind had no use for either time or matter, but they were shiny baubles for bored creatures to play with. They observed. They gazed transfixed as reality as we know it created itself from a single stray thought._

_Eventually, as is wont to happen, the Creator’s attention was distracted. I have no idea what could have possibly distracted it, but it turned away for their equivalent of a heartbeat. In the time it takes a so-called god to be distracted, a lot can happen in the realm of space and matter. The Creator was surprised to see that its creation had changed._

_Matter formed stars, stars grew and died and exploded, their corpses forming the heavy elements. Without any intervention, the Creator god’s toy had grown and changed into something new and complex. Your science is spot-on with that, Mary, well done._

Around them, the toddler universe spun, star systems and galaxies rising and falling only to be replaced by younger ones. Millions of years condensed before their eyes, evolution narrowing itself down from cosmic to galactic to systemic to planetary scales with dizzying speed.

_It’s beautiful._

Of course it was beautiful. And of course this tiny, fragile creature would be transfixed by the glory of it all. 

_It's not enough to create, Mary. Creation without wisdom breeds cancer, and your false god unleashed a plague upon that it had created. Matter begat life, and life evolved, and evolution had raged unheeded and unhindered for longer than either of us can fathom before the Creator turned its gaze back upon creation. And then, even then, did it learn restraint?_

Lilith did not reach for Mary’s response. She could feel the mortal woman at the edge of her consciousness. She'd spent too long in Mary’s skin, too long supported by that narrow frame. She felt Mary’s fear, and knew that Mary could feel the outrage growing within her own soul. They were far too entwined in this place that was not a place to keep secrets from each other.

Had she a mouth with which to scream, lungs filled with fire with which to burn a throat made raw from things unsaid, Lilith might have done so.

But words were meaningless here, as were justice and salvation.

_He...wanted more…_ came the tiny, mortal thought.

Oh, Mary, what he wanted… _It wasn't enough to unleash chaos, he wanted to make it sentient. The Creator god saw living creatures, self-replicating toys it could mold and shape, and wanted more. Plankton begat palm trees, paramecia begat pterodactyls, it was a frenzy of design, yet it was never enough_

_Lilith…_

_He got frustrated with the dinosaurs, threw a huge rock at them, and started over with the warm bloods. Not right, not right, obsession, creation, destruction, start over…_

_Lilith, you’re frightening me._

Her mind was playing through the process. She’d found it here millennia ago, victim of her own raging curiosity, a disgusting truth she had swallowed and kept within her like a knife in the gut for so very, very long.

_Eventually, homo sapiens evolved. These were a species with potential. These were creatures it could work with…_

There on the African veldt, they were surrounded by hunters, barely recognizable, more animal than human. A male. A female.

_The Creator god took two of these beings and tried. Changed them. Sculpted them. Still, it wasn’t enough. Still the Creator god wanted...more. So...he cheated._

_Cheated?_

_He ripped the god-ness from his chest and thrust it into two of his little playthings. He made them aware… He took these animals, creatures of space and time and death and passion, and imbued them with his own otherness. He made them...more._

Swirls of red and black and pain and rage surrounded them. Worlds exploded. DNA strands wove and unraveled in an unholy dance as Lilith's howl of rage enveloped Mary's cry of terror. 

And then, they were back in Mary’s parlor, Zelda and Hilda staring at them in confusion.

"And that..." The ice in Lilith's voice matched the coldness in her clear blue eyes. "Is how Adam and I came to be."

It was the last thing Mary heard before collapsing.

**The Children of Lilith**

“I think she’s coming around.”

Mary had never thought about gravity, honestly. It was a constant, like taxes and morning breath, that she rarely considered or stressed over. 

Gravity, at this moment, was a very unpleasant companion. Her entire body felt it, from the hairs on her neck to the nails on her toes. She was horribly, undeniably aware of every part of her body and its relative mass compared to the gravity generated by the planetary body beneath her supine form. “Ow…..”

“Yes, she’s coming round.”

Hilda’s British accent, while pleasant enough, felt harsh against her ears. Mary’s face contracted tightly against the rush of sensory input. Her eyelids seemed to offer no protection from the light in the room, and even the soft touch of a hand on her arm seemed brutish to her skin.

Lilith’s voice cut through her disorientation. “It will take a few moments before you’re used to physical form again. I’m sorry, but I needed you to understand the beginning before we could explain the rest.” 

Mary cracked her eyes open, lids heavy and sluggish. Three faces, one unnervingly familiar, gazed down upon her with varying degrees of concern, impatience, and barely-restrained frustration. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was a hoarse croak. “I never faint.” She pushed herself hard, urging her reluctant muscles into motion until she’d painfully lifted herself to a seated position. “I...I wasn’t prepared.”

“Who could be?” Zelda’s voice was actually warm, her hand steadying on Mary’s shoulder. “It’s very disconcerting. I know from experience.” She exchanged a knowing glance with Lilith, who said nothing but nodded sympathetically.

“I’m suddenly very happy I just got the verbal retelling,” Hilda muttered. “Popping in and out of non-physical form seems pretty horrible.”

Mary blinked hard, accepting the cup of tea Hilda offered. “You said...the Creator god infused humans with...whatever that was?”

“Only two,” Lilith corrected. “Myself and Adam. One moment we were animals, just like the rest of them. The next….” 

Mary could not bear seeing the expression of pain on the same face she saw in the mirror each morning. The connection between them waned, but she could still experience enough of Lilith’s essence to know merely thinking of these times was painful. “The next, you were sentient. You were...godlike?”

Lilith lowered herself to her knees, taking Mary’s hands in her own. They were all four huddled together, like sisters sharing a confidence. “It was…we were...alive. Aware. Imbued with that overwhelming curiosity that started everything going.” Lilith averted her gaze, as if suddenly aware of her own self-revelation. “Even the Creator realized it had gone too far. Others of its kind noticed, too, and for a moment it seemed humanity would die as soon as it was born. In the end, though, curiosity won out and we were allowed to live. For what it’s worth, we didn’t call ourselves Adam and Lilith. We were just... _us_. We were separated from the non-sentient homo sapiens, placed in our own little garden paradise with everything a curious child could want. And we were content, ignorant of being studied as we set about doing what humans do--naming, categorizing, exploring, experiencing.” Her voice grew hard. “It was determined by the creator beings that there would only be two of us. Two to study, two to observe, isolated from others of our kind so as not to spread the spark and unleash a wildfire.”

“But you were still animals,” Zelda said softly.

“We did what any two animals would do when left alone in paradise…” Lilith agreed. “I knew my daughter was growing inside me almost immediately, and I knew she would be like us--aware.” The bitterness in her voice was palpable. “Three is not two, and my child would not be allowed to survive.”

Hilda breathed out heavily. “These creatures really didn’t know what they were messing with, did they?”

“A mother’s protective instinct is a fierce and dangerous thing,” Zelda said. 

“I was not thrown out of Paradise,” Lilith said. “I ran. I did something none of them could predict. I defied them, defied Adam, forsook paradise to protect my child.” Her tones were venomous. “I hid amongst the non-sentients, smart enough to make myself both useful and non-threatening until my baby could be born. The creator beings could have found me at any time, but they were so stunned by my actions that I suppose I was more interesting to them alive than dead. My Sophia was born healthy and beautiful. The minute I looked into her eyes, I recognized the magic in them. She was me, and I was her, and the creators could hang themselves if they thought I was going to give her up. They isolated us to be their lab experiments, having no understanding what they were doing, and frankly, I was _not_ about to let them tell me what I could do with my body. ”

“And they just... _let you_?” Hilda asked.

Lilith grinned almost ferally. “They had problems of their own. You see, my mate was inventing the temper tantrum and they were not prepared to deal with it. He wanted his mate back, but they knew that could never be. So they offered him other females, but he wanted nothing to do with them. Eventually, they came up with a compromise.” She drew in a deep breath. “They split the consciousness of Adam in half, and put one part in a female he called Eve. Their children would share consciousness, but not of the intensity my Sophia had.”

“Diluting the blood stream,” Mary murmured. “It makes sense. Any child you had with a non-sentient would be diluted, and all of Adam and Eve’s children would be...well, human.”

“And once again, the creator beings are short-sighted to a near criminal level.” Lilith kept her tone crisp, almost professional, as she continued. “Neither I nor Sophia, who grew strong and lovely, would mate with the non-sentients. As soon as I knew we were safe, we set out on our own, isolating ourselves from both the non-sentients and the ever growing family of Adam and Eve. We were happy. We learned how to use the gift of the creators, how to manipulate plants to grow fuller and provide more food. We played with the elements and lived joyfully for many years.” She smiled softly at the memory. "And Adam didn't give a fig about his spawn, only that he didn't have a "mate." Still, we had no need for any of them. We were perfectly happy on our own, learning magic, and living peacefully without the interference of men or gods."

There was a finality to those last few words, an aching wound of a silence that engulfed the four women huddled together in Mary’s parlor. Each felt it in her womb and blood and heart and mind, each knew without being told the fate of poor Sophia.

“The first murder was not Cain slaying Abel,” Mary whispered into the thick quiet. 

“The sons of Adam were not so discriminating as their father had been before Eve. They rutted happily with the non-sentient women, producing barely aware mongrels who roamed, feral through the garden. The stories you were told,” Lilith looked from witch to witch to woman, a truth so raw and unbearable none of them could face her straight on. “None of the stories, about the fall, the apple, any of it, were true. The mongrel sons of Adam set upon my Sophia. Even in their rough understanding, they knew her to be precious--so much more than any of them.”

Hilda reached out a hand for Lilith, Zelda another, while Mary drew in a deep, hard breath.

“When I found what was left of her, the broken remains of the only other fully-conscious being on this planet….” Lilith’s voice was choked, softer than a stiletto in the throat, and equally piercing. “Nothing remained. Nothing mattered. Of all I had learned, all I had discovered since my awakening, nothing fit closer, surged harder through me than rage, grief, and the need for vengeance.” Her hands shook, held tightly by the witches seated before her. “Those stories, the ones the feminists refuse to believe…” She lowered her gaze, a cross between mad pride and regret on her features. “The children of Adam and Eve were fair game. Babies, stolen from the sleeping arms of their mothers, sacrificed on the altar of rage. Sons seduced and crops destroyed. I was like a plague on the children of Man, lighting and disappearing without warning, never in the same way.”

She stood, releasing both priestess and kitchen witch, a bare glance as she turned towards the fire which had raged non-stop during her sojourn in Mary’s life. “Mostly I wandered. When it got too much, when even the blood and flesh of man was not enough, I wandered. Heat, thirst, pain were nothing to me. They were just part of the agony of sentience. I wandered, alone on this world of half-conscious mortals, and cursed the beings who subjected me to this hell.” Her head lowered momentarily, and then she began laughing. “And that’s when I found him.”

“Him?” Mary asked.

“Lucifer,” Zelda said quietly. “The Dark Lord.”

“He was one of them, expelled for reasons he never bothered to explain to me, imprisoned in a body made of matter and time and carnality. It was not a good fit, and it seemed sure he would die. But he was the first being I could truly sense after Sophia’s death, and frankly, his hunger for vengeance drew me more than any sense of purpose or loneliness. I used the magic I’d learned to heal his physical form, though he never meshed completely with his animal prison. We became lovers, bound by our desire for power, destruction, and revenge.” She turned back to the three women seated on the settee, a look of sardonic resignation on her face. “His initial goal was to return to the realm of the Creator gods. We tried that for a long time, even tempted Eve into consuming food infused with creator essence. That was when the Creator beings finished with us and with all of this chaos. They closed the connection between who and what they were and their creation, leaving only that one space left. The connection was severed, and try as we might, Lucifer and I could not reopen it.”

“The Creators abandoned us,” Mary said flatly.

“Left us to our own devices, safely disconnected so that we might not infect their perfectly static realm. Our rage unsatisfied, Lucifer and I turned our sights to the creation itself. If we could not rule heaven, then we would rule Earth itself and all the creatures therein.” Lilith laughed. It was an ugly, humorless sound. “I appear to have inherited my Creator’s short-sightedness, because I actually believed Lucifer when he said we were partners. I was as big a fool as the Fool who made me.”

“But no more,” Zelda said firmly. She stood now, moving with purposeful strides to stand beside Lilith. “The Church of Lilith will no longer be subservient to men, or to those who would make us slaves to their own ambitions.”

“Here, here,” Hilda added.

Mary watched in fascination. Her rational brain still struggled to wrap itself around all she’d heard. The ghosts of her atheist parents, her Catholic grandmother, and her Quaker ancestors rattled through her psyche, along with the voice of her own hard-earned spirituality, and all of them were just this side of overwhelmed. “I still…” she started, her own voice strange in her ears after listening to Lilith for so long. It was unnerving, so close to her own, yet so completely different, and her mind was still unravelling the differences. “I still don’t understand what all of this has to do with me.”

Zelda exchanged glances with Lilith and, at the ancient woman’s quick nod, responded. “The enmity between the Children of Eve and the Children of Lilith started a long time ago, obviously. The witches, descended from those mothered by Lilith and sons of Eve, have spent centuries either hunting or being hunted by mortals. The balance of power has shifted back and forth over the decades.”

“Problem is, it wasn’t a natural shift,” Hilda interceded. “We were being...manipulated.”

“Satan wanted an army, and he wanted a loyal one. In the Church of Night, we were taught that our magic came from Lucifer, and only by pledging ourselves wholly to him would we retain our extended lives and powers,” Zelda said bitterly. “Very few witches living today remember before the Burning Times. Few of us remember a time when witches weren’t an endangered species. The pressure to sign the book, to retain magic, to marry properly and produce heirs is drummed into us from childhood.”

“What we didn’t know,” Hilda said. “What Zelda found as she went down the rabbit hole she found in Amelia’s diary, was that the Vitiators existed long before the Salem trials, and their purpose was much more direct and sinister.”

“Prior to the Burning Times, any witch who refused to sign the book was subjected to an _eradicā́mus_ spell much more severe than the one used on your ancestors. Not only was the disobedient witch or warlock stripped of their powers, but all members of that family were lost. This was when magical folk were more plentiful.”

“They were…culling the herd?” Mary gasped.

“An efficient form of control,” Zelda said coldly. “No family members left to oppose the hierarchy, and a strong deterrent to any sympathetic witch or warlock who might get similar ideas.”

"Not to mention breeding obedience right into the bloodlines," Hilda muttered. "Like dogs…."

“But…” Mary searched her memories, jogged loose by her time in the Creator’s dimension. “Sabrina didn’t lose her powers when she refused to sign the book.”

"Sabrina was..." Zelda hesitated. "A special case… "

"To be honest, no one in our local coven has refused to sign in living memory," Hilda sighed. “It was a _really_ good deterrent,” she said.

“The last recorded witch to refuse to sign the book was in 1832, in Illinois,” Zelda added. “Since the time of the Greenwood Thirteen, there have only been 7 dissenters on record.”

“But,” Hilda inserted. “Those seven dissenters were hexed with a modified version of the _eradicā́mus_ spell, one that did not extend the suppression of magic to all family members.”

Lilith stood silently before the fireplace, her face expressionless, her arms folded across her chest in a not-quite protective pose. 

It was to Lilith that Mary directed her next question. “Is there no hope of reversing the spell?” The look in Lilith’s eyes was answer enough. “Okay, then, what do we do? How do we...what is our end goal here, ladies?” She shrugged, a matter-of-fact gesture that dared them to try to keep her out of it now that she knew what she knew.

“We take back our power,” Hilda said.

“We rebuild our church, our _true_ church, in the name of the one true being left from the Creator. We rebuild paradise,” Zelda says. “But to do that, we can no longer be sheep at the feet of the Dark Beast. There are seven families of witches out there, somewhere, seven families who may or may not have magic and who have no allegiance whatsoever to the Dark Lord or his church.” Zelda looked for no less than a general rallying her troops. “We need to locate these families, bring them to our side, and build up our forces against the Church of Night.”

Lilith looked from Zelda to Hilda to Mary. “The Priestess, the Healer, the Teacher,” she said softly. “You will form the pillars of my church.” Her voice, so eerily reminiscent of one tiny mortal’s, resonated with a conviction as old as humanity itself. “And together we shall reclaim this world for the Children of the Creator.”

The End


End file.
